Bishop Alonso Gerardo Garza Trevino of Piedras Negras, Mexico, is pictured outside San Agustin Cathedral in Laredo, Texas, Jan. 14. He was among a group of U.S. and Mexican bishops meeting to discuss border issues in mid-January. His diocese is located across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas. He said it was unsettling to hear that an estimated 20,000 children come to the U.S. from Mexico and Latin American countries each year.

Catholic News Service

MEXICO CITY — The bishop of the border town of Piedras Negras, Mexico, escaped a carjacking unscathed and suspects the crime was a case of his being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bishop Alonso Garza Trevino was ordered out of his 2012 Mazda truck at gunpoint while stopped at an intersection at around 10 p.m. Sept. 25, his spokesman, Father Juan Renovato Lopez, told Catholic News Service.

The bishop and Father Renovato escaped unharmed, but received a "scare," Father Renovato said. The vehicle was recovered a few hours later.

Piedras Negras, which borders Eagle Pass, Texas, has experienced an upswing in violence as drug cartels battle for a city considered a key for moving illegal merchandise to the United States and importing guns into Mexico.

The city made headlines Sept. 17 when 132 prisoners walked out of the local prison in an escape that officials blamed on Los Zetas, the cartel of ex-soldiers now carrying out crimes.

Father Renovato says church officials are asking locals to "be brave, but to take precautions, too."